I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

I just love the maker&#x27;s mind.<p>&gt; I want something that does not exist, I will make it.<p>Making things has never been so accessible, if you don&#x27;t know how to start, join a community and ask, if they are hostile, just ask chatgpt and start from there.<p>3d printers are 200$, esp32 is the same cost as arduino nano.<p>Want to make AI things? Make them. Want to make coat hangers? Make them. Want to make a book stand? Make it.<p>I have few bank PCBs, and every day I hold one and I ask it &#x27;what do you want to be?&#x27; and just wait and listen, it doesn&#x27;t tell me, so I make it into what I want, and then try again the next day.<p>As David Lynch says, ideas are very quiet, you have to learn how to listen, so far I have not heard one, but maybe some day..

I came across the Kickstarter [1] for this as a Facebook ad and passed over it for all the reasons folks are citing below. Folding hanger? What&#x27;s the use case? But watching the video, she&#x27;s really put a lot of thought into this. The system with the paired rod is pretty slick. I love the notches for keeping the hangers spaced.<p>This solves a problem not everyone has (not me, for instance--I have full-size closets), but I almost wish I did. I think it&#x27;s going to do well. The Kickstarter is already double-funded.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;simonegiertz&#x2F;coat-hingers-foldable-coat-hangers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;simonegiertz&#x2F;coat-hinge...</a>

Looks so simple, but I guess that&#x27;s a sign of good design. I was also surprised something like this didn&#x27;t exist already.<p>But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.

Isn&#x27;t the point of a coat hanger to hang your clothes uncrumpled? If you&#x27;re compromising on that aspect, wouldn&#x27;t wall hooks fit most use cases?<p>For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap.<p>You can also stack the coat hangers vertically, e.g. with cheap plastic brackets like these: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.aliexpress.com&#x2F;_Ew6YWEt" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.aliexpress.com&#x2F;_Ew6YWEt</a><p>There&#x27;s surely good niche use cases for these, but looking at this advertisment I don&#x27;t see why I&#x27;d want to go for this particular solution.<p>The sales pitch would be more convincing if it was contrasted to other space saving clothes hanging techniques in existing use, rather than pointing out that the inventor was unable to find prior art for her particular solution.

My great-grandfather had a factory making light furniture and coat hangers, and had several patents for types of adjustable coat hangers. He was expropriated by the soviets after the second world war, in eastern Germany and fled to the west. It&#x27;s fun to imagine an alternative universe where I am the heir of an adjustable coat hanger empire.

Pull out retractable closet rod.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Retractable-Adjustable-Wardrobe-Clothing-Extendable&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B099RWJ1GY?th=1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Retractable-Adjustable-Wardrobe-Clothi...</a><p>Mount under shelf. Use high quality hanger that doesn&#x27;t damage or crease. No extra folding action. Put nice article of clothing in front and looks very nice.<p>Turning storage 90 degrees for shallow storage solves more problems than folding clothes in half. Having seen tons of these in show rooms, I dare say it&#x27;s a long solved problem. Also there&#x27;s rods with angled notches to turn hangers 45 degrees.

I forgot who she was, so:<p>&gt; Giertz has previously branded herself as &quot;the queen of shitty robots&quot; on her YouTube channel, where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect.[9] Giertz&#x27;s creations have included an alarm clock that slaps the user,

I just saw the Kickstarter[1]. The margins on these coat hangers look so good that it&#x27;d make NVIDIA blush.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;simonegiertz&#x2F;coat-hingers-foldable-coat-hangers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;simonegiertz&#x2F;coat-hinge...</a>

Theres something so refreshing about these videos by makers (also adam savage, mark rober, lots of others) where they just emphasize how many failed attempts it takes before they end up with something &quot;less terrible&quot;. Makes everyone seem so... human :)

I&#x27;m baffled by the comments that are criticizing this because there are other solutions as if there is only one true solution to this problem.

I have more questions about the enormously high bed stand in the opening shot. It immediately makes tons of sense (so much otherwise wasted vertical space in a room), but I have never seen such a thing.

Her Truckla video is hilarious but serious at the same time !<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A</a>

Can’t this already easily be accomplished and even flatter to the wall simply by using a hanger with a swiveling head? Only downsides compared to this invention would be the way the different items nested together and the fact that they stuck out to the sides 50% of each hanger at the ends?

Love the iteration story, but like, what about pants? And thick winter coats? And stuff I don&#x27;t want a weird potential fold line slightly to the left&#x2F;right of centre?<p>Her example rack only contains the clothes that would be perfect for this. My rack and hangers accommodate all my needs with one simple cheap design.

Here’s an idea. Instead of the rod being parallel with the wall, have multiple small rods perpendicular to the wall. They can easily accommodate full size coat hangers. Problem solved

First reaction was; &quot;This is really dumb. It&#x27;ll take up twice the width.&quot;<p>But after watching through to the end, Giertz comes off really genuine and it&#x27;s an inspiring short story of failure and problem solving, and I love that. I believed at the end that she&#x27;s solving a unique problem. Can&#x27;t hate on it.

Sadly, the design is most likely going to be copied, mass produced and available on Temu&#x2F;Amazon&#x2F;Alibaba within the next several weeks. Kick Starter is basically free R&amp;D for Chinese manufacturers.

I was hoping this would be the coat hanger I have in my ideas bin for the last three years. I need a coat hanger that can be operated one-handed. (accessibility being invention&#x27;s other mother) If her design could be easily folded with one hand, letting you insert it into the neck of a T-shirt, and then it automatically reopens by spring, I&#x27;d have comfy clothes.

I really like the idea, but it only makes sense if you custom build your hanger on the wall, that is, there is no commercially available (afaik) hanger that would make this useful. But this may be an opportunity for a second product and sell it with the coat hangers, and people would spend more on furniture than a coat hanger.

Those wire hangers are murder in clothes. You want thick wooden hangers that will last you a lifetime.

For me the killer app for a coat hanger would be one that allows you to remove the shirt easily with one hand and without stretching out the shirt or possibly breaking the hanger, just pull to remove the shirt right off the hanger. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to come up with this design, and I’m getting close, the secret is spheres

Does anyone know her cancer situation? It almost bummed me out that she got sick as soon as she became popular.

I used to like her videos, but found out that she takes other people&#x27;s work and passes it off as her own. This video is a good example. Anyone reading the title and watching the video, it appears that she&#x27;s done all of the work iterating on the prototypes. No one else is mentioned in doing any of the work.<p>Only in the comments does she post &quot;If you have any technical questions, my co-inventor @stumcconnel will be here helping answer stuff!&quot;<p>So not only did she not invent this by herself, she&#x27;s referring to someone else for technical questions. This isn&#x27;t the first time she&#x27;s done this. It&#x27;s just a pet peeve as someone who is technical and has gotten credit assigned to someone else. &#x2F;soapbox

Congratulations to the inventor.<p>But if space (depth) is the issue then there are many existing solutions like a &quot;multi layer&quot; hanger.<p>I just googled &quot;multi layer hanger&quot;.<p>May be this has a use case or it simply scratches the creator&#x27;s itch.

Ah, the classic side quest into a seemingly useless project - I can relate. Spending three years on a coat hanger sounds just like the kind of rabbit hole I&#x27;d fall into. It&#x27;s usually more about the journey and scratching that itch than the end product. But turning it into a business? Now that&#x27;s impressive. Most of my hyperfocus side quests end up as forgotten userscripts or abandoned github projects. Kudos to her for not only sticking with it but also turning it into something tangible and potentially profitable!

I had a good friend who studied industrial design, and they told me that these kind of improvements are the most impressive. Fixing things we all use and didn’t realize needed fixing.

I really like her videos but I don&#x27;t understand how this solves the problem in a better way than any of the obvious alternatives and it kind of bothers me that she doesn&#x27;t address this at all in the video. All she does is say &quot;there are no folding coat hangers on the market&quot;.<p>The simplest thing would be to just get a hanger with a rotating hook and hang it at a ~45 degree angle and I don&#x27;t see how her solution is better, especially considering she wants to have over $6 per hanger.

Neat middleground between folded clothes heavily creased but stored compactly in drawers and entirely unfolded crease-free hanging clothes. I presume there&#x27;ll be some creasing, but it&#x27;s definitely saving space vs. conventional hangers.<p>I wonder, if creasing is still an issue, if it&#x27;ll be clearly asymmetrical especially on the back... Since the fold in the hanger isn&#x27;t centered.

It&#x27;s Simone Giertz! Internet famous for making useless machines and shitty robots, has now apparently pivoted to making more useful things.<p>It doesn&#x27;t solve a problem I have, and I worry that they might break under heavier clothes, but it&#x27;s a cool and surprisingly simple idea, and probably perfect for people with tiny houses. Which is probably a growing demographic.

These are the nicest clothes hangers I have in my possession, i.e. they can be used with a lot of different stuff: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.topvalu.net&#x2F;items&#x2F;detail&#x2F;4549741790529&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.topvalu.net&#x2F;items&#x2F;detail&#x2F;4549741790529&#x2F;</a><p>Now I wish they had a hinge too. (Hmm, weekend project?)

I love when people see a problem and they spend a (seemingly) insane amount of time, work and passion to solve it.<p>I saw a similar thing some time ago posted here about designing better pockets for pants. Finally found it again: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38301280">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38301280</a>

I was also definitely surprised this didn&#x27;t already exist; but hey I never thought of it either! My apartment has a bunch of bookshelves with hanging bars in them (?) definitely not big enough for normal hangers unless you turn them sideways and lose a bunch of space.<p>On this design though, my biggest criticism would be that it requires the hanger to be leaning against the wall when folded, to not fall at an angle. While that&#x27;s fine for the co-designed rack she has, it makes them a lot less useful on their own or in other randomly wall-to-rack spaced closets (even says so in the kickstarter).<p>The simple solution is to move the hook to be centered over the folded hanger, so it&#x27;s balanced when folded. It&#x27;d look super goofy and not hang right unfolded, but that&#x27;s probably fine. Surprised none of the prototypes tried that.

Won’t this create pressure marks on the clothes where the hanger pushes against the wall? Since it’s not hanging symmetrically like a normal coat hanger, the hanger will tilt backwards against the wall due to gravity pulling the front part down.

I&#x27;d be interested in tests to see just how much space it actually saves. From personal experience, you can fit quite a few shirts on that same on-the-wall rail using a normal coathanger with a rotating head. Not that this isn&#x27;t better, I&#x27;m just not sure it&#x27;s &quot;six bucks per hanger and using a normal rod instead of buying ours isn&#x27;t recommended PS you can&#x27;t use them for pants&quot; better.

If the author of the video wanted to solve just her particular case, she would make a diagonal cutouts on her dresser beam and hang the clothes at an angle using standard hangers. She has enough room for that, plus it would look stylish. Over time I came to appreciate solutions like that, you don&#x27;t want to always solve a general problem.

I spent 3 hours writing this message ... that is, I started 3 hours ago, paused that immediately, then went and did other things for 2:59:30hrs, finally I came back and finished typing this textual masterpiece.<p>She&#x27;s a successful inventor &amp; youtuber, good on her. the product is not bad actually, a great impulse buy (gifting), just not for me.

This is a solved problem. Solved by making the hook rotatable so you can hang the clothes at an angle and thus save the same amount of room as with the discussed method, without all the downsides. I wonder if that inventor was also showered in cash and attention. I wonder if it also took them 3 years.

Why is this not a thing? Clothes hangers are designed to keep the structure of the clothing, if this design is used you might as well fold your shirts and use less storage space.<p>Seems obvious if you’ve had to wear a perfect military uniform you pressed.<p>Three years and no one mentioned this, is this real content or is this fake TV?

Recently listened to her on Lex Fridman&#x27;s podcast - would highly recommend. Made me want to dig out the raspberry pi&#x27;s and esp32 boards from my closet and build something.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OgIo36F6Fsg</a>

My biggest issue with coat hangers - including this one - is that they are all thin so forget putting heavier shirts, sweaters, and especially jackets on them - they&#x27;ll stretch out part of the shoulder and you have this visible piece of material sticking out when you put it on.

My first point: This post is part of a launch campaign. We don&#x27;t want all kickstarter projects to be listed on HN do we?<p>My second point: Meh. I might find it interesting if I found it while browsing in a dollar store but it&#x27;s not exactly intriguing stuff.

I like it very much. The concept, how she communicates, and the fact that she solves her own problem first.<p>I do not know how will she prevent people from copying it?<p>Amazon is terrible, if something works, many will copy it for half the price. And it&#x27;s not fare.

...that creases your clothes?<p>And demoed with hanging a t-shirt, just fold it.<p>All but the cheapest (single piece moulded plastic) coat hangers have hooks that swivel, so it could hang at an angle solving this anyway. There are also products on the market that collapse down vertically, so you have multiple items on one hook, which as long as it also swivels solves this problem too and gives much more capacity. The folding design puts creases in, and takes twice as much space horizontally - if you have the outward space problem you&#x27;re probably short of that too.<p>But it&#x27;s a nice video of designing and prototyping and creating something, I might subscribe&#x2F;watch some more of her stuff even though I think this particular solution (and especially as a kickstarted product) is silly.

And as soon as I saw it I thought what a good solution for getting the hangers inside of the neck opening without stretching the fabric, but the purpose of halving the required storage space is just genius.

Hmm - does it not generate a crease down the middle of all of your shirts?

I really wish she’d do a checkable garment bag. <i>fingers crossed</i>

141450€ for coat hangers on which you can&#x27;t actually hang a real winter coat... (real being one that would be tough enough to not fold in half) that looks a lot like a Juicero

It bothers me so much that the initial prototype and final product and everything in between are largely the same. I feel like there&#x27;s potential for some abstract thinking.

I want to make V1 of this myself, but actually the cost of the plywood and the metal hinge is probably more costly than this product. I hope they can get it into big stores.

The GIF on the kickstarter is a nice TLDR: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ksr-ugc.imgix.net&#x2F;assets&#x2F;043&#x2F;049&#x2F;335&#x2F;c230c7314b0668e7249151859c2222c3_original.gif?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&amp;w=680&amp;fit=max&amp;v=1699919698&amp;gif-q=50&amp;q=92&amp;s=5c27ce687d41261cb7a3d4f84b926c03" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ksr-ugc.imgix.net&#x2F;assets&#x2F;043&#x2F;049&#x2F;335&#x2F;c230c7314b0668e...</a><p>Why doesn&#x27;t it fold in the opposite direction, so that the fold faces out rather than in? Seems to me that orientation would be better for organization and finding what you&#x27;re looking for at a glance in the closet.<p>If the hook part could be rotated (as is in common design of other hangers), such orientation could be easily accomplished. As the hook is fixed, it cannot be.

I could see this working really nicely for those clothes in the liminal space between clean and dirty that I inevitably toss on my chair right now.

It took James Dyson five years and 5,127 prototypes to create a vacuum cleaner based on industrial shop cyclone vacuum technology.

need this in tokyo

Really great video... great job!!!

She should add a version with shoulder pads, those wires can be pretty deforming

I&#x27;m sure others have said it too, but Simone is especially talented.

YouTube hai jika anda memberikan silver play baton anda selamat whahaha

That is cool. Would allow you to have shallow cupboards in small rooms.

I found <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kangaroohanger.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kangaroohanger.com&#x2F;</a> to be a more practical and viable &quot;actually better&quot; clothes hanger.

A masterclass in persistence and resilience.

This is great!! Good job Simone :)

Honestly I&#x27;m most surprised by how few people seem to recognize the channel lol. I figured maker YouTube and the open sauce type crowd would have a bigger level of representation here but I guess we all live in our bubbles!

I love the mindset and the design process. But I never hung any cloths so it is not for me.

Seems like they won’t work without the special notched rod with evenly spaced grooves.

This is so bloody stupid that it’s amazing. It literally solves a valid issue. I have a closet that isn’t deep and have short coat hangers for a bunch of clothes but this would allow my clothes to not sag off the end and fit into the closet nicely and neatly.<p>Off to kickstarter I go.

Original submission title was &quot;Why Simone Giertz spent 3 years working on a coat hanger&quot;, moderators changed it to &quot;I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger&quot;, the title of the video is &quot;Why I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger&quot;.

I wonder if she considered making &quot;extensions that are a bit taller than the vertical distance of the hangers and then you could get even more stuff on one rack as you stagger the shorter and taller hangers.

Reminds me of &quot;Noiseless completely silent drape runner&quot;

3 years on this? What a blatant lie. This existed for more than 30 years.

If you want to save space why hang your clothes? Stacking them is easy and does not require another object to be used.

Three years on a <i>clothes hanger design</i>? She&#x27;s <i>paid</i> to do this?!<p>&quot;There&#x27;s a sucker born every minute!&quot; - Old saying<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;skeptikai&#x2F;the-real-story-behind-the-quote-theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute-1db9a7220d34" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;skeptikai&#x2F;the-real-story-behind-the-quote...</a>

I live in North Texas what the fuck is a coat hangar gonna do for me compared to the back of a chair for a couple months?<p>If you think I&#x27;m being crass, I got this perspective from here. A rural Chinese student went to the big City. One classmate gave a pitch about a startup for family name &#x2F; style napkins to sell. He couldn&#x27;t help himself but show how most of the people in the country used napkins.<p>He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and they were offended.<p>Congratulations on your accomplishment, and as a creative person who constantly feels the wrath of rejection due to people not seeing the inherent utility of music as a pathway to happiness...this will go on my wall next to the toilet that encourages kids to poop in it by talking to them.